A new RED EARTH public art project exploring our relationship with food, landscape and agriculture.

Bread aims to reconnect communities with the hidden archaeological, ecological and agricultural history of the landscape through exploring our cultural, physical and historical relationship with a food nutritionally and symbolically important in cultures worldwide.

Bread continues an exploratory process begun in The Field and Outcrop: long-term collaborative projects in the landscape in partnership with farmers, land managers, archaeologists, architects, geologists, ecologists and local people.

CONCEPT

Bread is about community and connection ­ to history, landscape, everyday ritual: The simplicity of sharing bread. It is about the cycles of life ­ what we grow, harvest, build, create, cook, eat, mark, celebrate. It is about transformations ­ from seed to grain, earth to food, bread to body.

It is also about what we have lost ­ a shared knowledge of what we eat and where it comes from, addressing the contemporary global ecological crisis around food sources, local distinctiveness, biodiversity and sustainable agriculture.

Bread will take place in two regions ­ possibly two countries ­ and span at least two agricultural years. It will involve research into the deep ecology of each site in collaboration with plant biologists, ecologists and archaeologists. This research will be used to devise a sculpture installation whose substance and form reflects the ecology and archaeology of the site. The base materials for the installation will be seeded and grown in a planting plan which reflects changes in agricultural practice - from Bronze Age spelt, oat and rye grains to modern wheat hybrids.

Central to Bread is the communal construction of outdoor ovens built from local earth, clay, chalk and lime. Loaves made from harvested grain will be baked en masse and used in a subsequent installation constructed from the raw crop.

A core element is the participation of people both as audience and collaborators in the piece, from ploughing and planting to harvesting, baking and eating. Each installation will be open to the public and activated in a closing event involving performance, feasting and a final firing of the ovens to coincide with traditional harvest celebrations. Participants from each region or country will be invited to make reciprocal journeys, bringing bread to celebrate with their ‘twin’ community ­ intercultural collaboration through a shared food.

The project will explore our relationship with bread through physical work, elemental processes and the rich culture of poetry, story and song around this simple yet universally symbolic food. Bread will include a publication of short stories, meditations and poems from a selection of commissioned authors which, combined with imagery and text from the project, will provide a lasting legacy for participants and public. PLEASE CONTACT RED EARTH IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN BEING A PARTNER IN THIS PROJECT